


so what fates do we share?

by Memelock



Series: sylvix week 2020 - now 100 percent more on time! [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Multi, also the character death thing does happen but it's not like the ending if that makes sense, because this is a reincarnation AU so you know the last one is a happy one because hey it's me, byleth nonbinary you know the drill, other characters mentioned but the tagged ones are especially relevant, quick cameo by mr margrave gautier but it's brief don't worry, there are other relationships but i'm not tagging them, this is after all a sylvain and felix event thing lol, vaguely non-explicit sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:14:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memelock/pseuds/Memelock
Summary: Sylvain, and Felix, and eyes opening and closing.//this is for day six of sylvix week 2020: reincarnation AU.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: sylvix week 2020 - now 100 percent more on time! [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933810
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	so what fates do we share?

**Author's Note:**

> this is for day 6 of the 2020 sylvix week — reincarnation AU. i decided to try writing it as if each time i’ve played through the game is a cycle… so you all get to see what kind of paired endings i’ve gotten over my time with the game. thanks to three houses for being so eminently replayable. title is from “bob dylan” by fall out boy.

**cycle one**

Sylvain wakes, or what feels like waking, in the middle of the Adrestian throne room. He’s covered in sweat and blood, some his own and some others, and before he even knows he’s doing it he’s looking for Felix, casting his gaze around. Felix is faster, sneakier, had worked his way up one of the branching side rooms and out of Sylvain’s sight. Dimitri, Mercedes, Annette, the Professor, cheering faces of his comrades in arms, but…

Ingrid emerges, weary-looking, from the open archway on the left. Outside is a garden, for pleasure only by the looks of it. It’s beautiful, some part of Sylvain thinks. Nothing like that grows in Faerghus. Nothing could. He looks to Ingrid. “Where’s Felix?”

“Hello yourself,” she says, and her tone is a little snappy but her eyes are light, shining with emotion. “He’s fast but he can’t literally fly. He’s back there if you want him.”

Sylvain does want him. Interesting word choice from Ingrid but it isn’t like she’s wrong. He swats her pegasus’ flank as he passes her, stripping the heavier pieces of his armor to move more quickly, to be more accessible, and follows the jerk of Ingrid’s head out onto the grass, spotted with paving stones.

Felix is there, among entrails and flowers, doing the meticulous post-battle wipe down of his sword before he sheathes it. Even the set of his spine looks weary, something lacking where Sylvain had seen it in their friends a moment ago in the dissipating shadow of unified Fodlan.

“You’re louder than thunder,” Felix says, not bothering to look over his shoulder, but Sylvain can picture him perfectly and they both know he’ll come closer anyway.

“Sneaking around isn’t my style,” Sylvain replies. Felix sheathes his sword after a short inspection, and Sylvain takes the opportunity to close the distance, moving between stones like he’s seven again and telling Dimitri that if he stepped on a crack it would break his mother’s back. He’d gotten in trouble for that one. “Hurt at all?”

Felix shakes his head, turning now to face him, bangs flopping with the motion. His hair looks lank, sweaty and dirty like Sylvain’s surely is, but he can’t find it in him to care. “Ingrid handled the mages, anything else can try to hit me if they like.”

“Thank the goddess for Ingrid,” Sylvain says, fervently, and it’s like the dam inside him since coming to breaks. He’s alive. Ingrid is alive. Felix is… alive. They made it. They did it. If his next words come out a little choked, it’s fine, right? There’s a lot going on. “I’m going to hug you now.”

“I’d kill you if you didn’t,” Felix replies, and if his voice shakes slightly it’s just fine by Sylvain, who wastes no time analyzing tone while putting all his effort into getting Felix into his arms. His body is warm against Sylvain’s, the heat of battle and the Adrestian sun making it oppressive inside what armor they’re both still wearing, and Felix’s hands clutching at his gambeson are surely damp but he can’t feel it through his own sweat and blood anyway. It’s interminably long, their press together, retelling their own story to each other from different perspectives — the entryway, the throne room, the treasure vault, the battle weaving in and out of doors. Felix’s fingers, conscious or not, graze the side where Sylvain says Annette pitched in to heal a graze from a sword, and Sylvain crooks his arm awkwardly behind his own back to take the hand that Felix says might have been burned with Thunder.

When Dedue and Ingrid come to drag them back to the rest of their army, Sylvain doesn’t bother to unlace their fingers. Felix doesn’t bother to lecture him about it. No one bothers to say anything, just sweet smiles and victory cheers passing around and around Enbarr, through the castle and outside of it, sweeping through the streets and out into Fodlan.

The celebration runs long and late, fueled by the stores of the Emperor, of a thousand years of Adrestian rule, familiar and unfamiliar faces cheering and singing and dancing with the kind of abandon Sylvain hasn’t seen since childhood. It’s wonderful to watch, still more wonderful to watch from Felix’s side, Felix who seems unusually amenable to staying near him, to letting Sylvain’s arm hang over his shoulders. Ingrid is happy under the other, surrounded by friends and food, until Dedue whisks her away to join the dancing and they’re left alone among the crowd.

“Goddess, this feels good,” Sylvain says, one of many iterations on the same concept, but Felix just nods in response, head bumping the crook of Sylvain’s elbow with each affirmation. “You want to join them next time the song changes? This one’s too complicated.”

Felix scoffs a little. “You never cared about complicated before,” he says.

“Well, if I know you’ll be my partner I want to pick one that you’ll like,” Sylvain explains, “and you don’t like complicated.”

“I like some things complicated,” Felix replies, which is odd, but the person who brought a fiddle ends the song very dramatically and Sylvain turns his attention briefly to what tune they’re lining up to play next.

“Oh?” Sylvain asks, half on autopilot for a moment before turning back to Felix, still under his arm. “That’s not the Felix I know.”

“Isn’t it?” Felix says. He’s not looking at Sylvain, he’s watching Dimitri and the Professor look more and more dismal as someone with a very loud voice explains the movements of the next dance. Dorothea and Lorenz look delighted. It’s a little sickening. “You’re complicated.”

Felix’s skin shines in the torchlight suffusing the room. Not for the first time, Sylvain thinks of what it might be like to press against that skin all over, to see it under the moon, in the light of a single candle, bathed with the strange bottled thunder of Morfis. He’s so deep in thought on the topic that he thinks he might imagine the next words out of Felix’s mouth.

“What?” Sylvain stammers, and if he was looking at Felix before he’s fully staring now, like a starving man at a hot meal.

“I think you heard me,” Felix says, and his voice is annoyingly calm, frustrating considering how he’s just upended Sylvain’s entire world. “This next dance is going to be convoluted too. Sothis only knows how many more complex ones they’re going to play. Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Fe,” Sylvain forces himself to say, knowing the risk he’s taking, “I think most people would assume something different out of that. Lucky for you, I know you so I’m—”

“I’m asking you to go to bed with me.” It’s like he doesn’t even know he’s pulling the floor out from under Sylvain, watching Dimitri step on their professor’s toes, watching them step right back. “The war is over, Sylvain. Don’t you think it’s time we gave this a try?”

And maybe it is that simple. Maybe it’s fated for this to happen, for them to continue letting each other peel back layer upon layer of world-weariness and defenses that aren’t needed in peacetime. It’s certainly simple enough to take Felix’s hand, for him to finally look up at Sylvain, smiling a little as he tugs at him, pulling him away from the lively music and crowds, away from Ingrid’s knowing smile, away from Annette’s wide eyes, up to the quarters where Dimitri had placed them, looking out onto the Adrestian pleasure gardens, fiddle floating through the air.

When Sylvain drifts off, late enough that he doesn’t know whether it’s the night they won the war or the day after, it’s next to Felix, right where he ought to be.

//

**cycle two**

Felix jolts awake in the middle of the night, as he does so often even after the fighting is done. He takes inventory — same bed as he went to sleep in, same moonlight outside the window, glowing over Lake Teutates, same orange hair next to him on the pillow they share.

Orange. It’s been the same orange for seven years but still he frowns. Shouldn’t it be brighter, first on the visible spectrum, shouldn’t the body be taller, broader?

It’s strange, being struck with a reality he’s lived with for as long as he can remember, but longer back still something stirs, murmuring _something is wrong_ loud and low in his mind. Felix has to hold himself back from physically shaking his head; Leonie is his partner, his friend, even his wife after an incident in Albinea had necessitated them finalizing their legal connection. It’s even good between them sometimes, like they’re not reaching for something else, like they didn’t pick the partner with the hair and the general demeanor to match what they actually wanted.

In fact, Felix doesn’t know that he’s looking for anything different nowadays. The moon over the lake is as beautiful next to Leonie as not, the money will come in tomorrow beside her better than otherwise, the life they have together is fruitful and dangerous in the only way it can be in peacetime, the peace they worked so hard to achieve, the peace Felix and Leonie and countless others had left their homes for. It still hurt, thinking about Faerghus and Leicester, and even Adrestia, restructured into the faith — sure, it was under the best leader the church had had in a millennium, but it was still different from what they’d known, what humanity had worked to achieve.

Felix sometimes spoke about it with Leonie, what they might have been without the Nabateans, hushed voices drunk in the woods away from society, nights that always ended with laughter and an unspoken renewal of vows, the promise to give each other what no other person would get.

Under the Teutates moon, stretching out on his back, just the wrong color of hair next to him, it’s easy to recall Garreg Mach, to conjure Sylvain and their Professor looking at each other across the body of the Immaculate One. It isn’t like Felix to reminisce, but it was one of the most important days in Fodlan’s history, so he isn’t too hard on himself. He’d never seen Sylvain look like that before, eyes wide, mouth agape, vulnerable, happy…

Six months later Sylvain was the most influential man in Fodlan, married to the most powerful figure in the church. Felix had mocked him mercilessly in school for his near-immediate departure to the Black Eagles, chasing big eyes and goddess knows what other big things. When he followed Sylvain after a few months of hearing stories of their prowess in battle, he really didn’t expect to be studying under Sylvain’s future spouse. Among the things the goddess only knows, what about Sylvain had endeared Byleth in the end is one of them. They always were a mystery.

Sylvain isn't like Leonie, Felix thinks, settling down against the mattress. It’s not every night they sleep on a mattress. Leonie is thrifty, something Sylvain never was, which means sometimes they’re out under the stars. Leonie isn’t clingy, something that defined Sylvain from childhood, hanging on his friends, touching you any chance he got, which means they can lie next to each other without overwhelming, without invading space. Leonie is kind throughout, all the way down under that blustery temperament, like Sylvain gone through an inversion. Leonie is practical and hard-working and admirable and—

Poking him in the side. Felix turns his head where it rests on his arm, looking at her. Her hair is disheveled, half-in and half-out of its ponytail, a mirror he’s sure of his own. “What are you thinking about?” she asks. It’s charming, he’d be lying if he denied it, the way no matter how recently she’s been sleeping her voice still has that wakeful quality.

“You,” he replies, honestly, and she scoffs. Leonie isn’t like Sylvain, she doesn’t need to hear all the time that she’s on your mind, that you’re fond of her, that you’re not disappointed or angry with her. She knows where she stands. “It’s true.”

“Well, you should be sleeping instead if that’s the case,” Leonie says, rolling over to face him completely. “We’re leaving for Rhodos in the morning. Bright and early.”

“Says who?” Felix replies, flippant. He’s half-smiling. The bantering is good with Leonie.

“Says the company we’re supposed to meet there tomorrow,” she huffs, rolling her eyes. They’re orange in the moonlight, lit like topaz. “If you don’t get up on time I’m leaving you here to fend for yourself.”

“I think I’ve proven I still know my way around a sword,” Felix replies.

Leonie laughs. It’s bright and sweet, and although Felix has never had a taste for the saccharine he’s sure gotten used to the sound. “Fair enough,” she replies. “How about you see how well you do with closing your eyes and turning off that head of yours?”

Felix shuts his eyes, pretend snores, ignores the soft smack of her palm on his chest to continue his pageantry.

“You know,” she says, and something in her tone makes him crack one eye open, look down at her, all earnest smile and wide eyes and muscles honed through years of protecting those weaker than herself, “you’re different from how you were in school. And during the war too.” She pauses, thoughtful, then continues. “I thought you might always be the same.”

“I thought I might too,” Felix admits. “I figured I could take myself out of Faerghus but couldn’t take Faerghus out of myself.”

Leonie blushes a little, not because she’s embarrassed but because she’s about to be. She’s not shy about eye contact though, not like Felix, so she’s looking right at him when she says, “I guess you needed me around after all.”

Felix’s heart thuds, one strong beat as if it could contain the rush of emotion for the woman who had thrown her life’s lot in with his to become the partner of someone who five years ago wouldn’t have known the meaning of the word. He rolls over to face her, fully, takes her jaw in his hands, and kisses her, hard, on the mouth. It’s enough, the contact returned, bodies warm and moving in the night, and suddenly falling asleep is the easiest thing in the world.

//

**cycle three**

As on most days, Sylvain wakes to the sound of Arnaitz screeching, although on this particular morning another less ever-present but no less familiar squeal joins him. Ingrid is out of bed already, like she is all other mornings, and Sylvain sighs and resigns himself to doing damage control.

When he makes his way to the hall, Arnaitz is already laughing, temperamental little imp, sitting on Bernadetta’s lap while she plays simple peekaboo games with him. His hair looks brushed, which either means Bernadetta is a better house guest even than he’d thought or that Ingrid has already made one round of the household.

“Daddy!” Oh, goddess, Isot. With her eyes, Bernadetta follows the red head that pops up over the arm of the couch, her favorite spot to crouch and try to read, or play with her brother’s things, or any other mischief that pops into her mind.

“Come here, kiddo,” Sylvain says, scooping her into his arms when she comes at him at a run and flopping down next to Bernadetta and Arnaitz on the couch. “Bernie, I insist that you make your husband pull out.”

“What’s pull out?” Isot asks as Bernadetta blushes, splotchy and red with the force of the embarrassment. Isot tugs on Sylvain’s hair. She’s certainly taking after her mother.

“You know us,” Bernadetta says, only stammering a little in the wake of Sylvain’s habitual overstepping. “We’re not the type to want more people around.”

“True,” Sylvain hums, letting Isot squirm off his lap to return to her certainly-too-difficult-for-her book, reaching for Arnaitz to take her place. He has higher emotions than his sister, more desire for touch, always wanting to be held and cuddled. It makes him a natural daddy’s boy. Isot tends to favor her mother, respecting her firmness, admiring her skills and practicality even at four. “You found the perfect guy, huh?”

“I guess so,” Bernadetta says, smiling a little. “Visiting you and Ingrid is fun but it definitely makes me remember why I don’t want children.”

“What a shame!” Ingrid’s voice is frank as always from the doorway, and even though it’s not malicious Bernadetta still startles, grin turning nervous as she shifts her attention to Ingrid. “You’re more than welcome to take this one when they arrive.” She pats her stomach, still not too noticeable under her usual clothing. It’s overwhelming to look at her like this sometimes, like Sylvain might feel enough to literally burst for the woman who has given him everything and demanded everything from him in return. Her hair makes her look like a star. “I saw your husband on his way back from the training grounds,” she says to Bernadetta, moving to sit by Sylvain on the couch, graciously allowing him to put an arm around her shoulders and plant a kiss on her head. She rolls her eyes. “Same old Felix.”

“He must be missing your sparring something fierce,” Sylvain says. “The only person in Fodlan not the literal reincarnation of a goddess strong enough to keep up with him.”

“You’re full of it,” Ingrid says, rolling her eyes again but also flushing a little. “You put a lot of time into it during the war if I remember correctly.”

“You and Felix always used to be at the training grounds back then,” Bernadetta chimes in, sounding a little awestruck. “We used to bet on who would come out first, you or Petra.”

“Petra is the perfect sparring partner,” Ingrid says wistfully. “Sothis sent her down to bless me.”

Sylvain chuckles, finger-combing Arnaitz’ hair. “Good thing I’m not the jealous type,” he says.

“Going to Brigid with her was so amazing,” Bernadetta says. Isot pops up from her book again.

“What’s Brigid?” she asks.

“Better than ‘what’s pull out’,” Sylvain says, just for the pleasure of seeing Ingrid’s brow furrow and her mouth drop open, just for the joy of kissing her temple and tugging her closer to him, let her cross her arms all she likes.

Felix joins them while Bernadetta is in the middle of explaining carnivorous plants to the ever-curious Isot. Arnaitz is still calm, listening wide-eyed to Bernadetta, as Felix plops right down on the floor, waiting for the attention of his favorite playmate to free up. It’s good when they’re together, Sylvain and Ingrid and what can increasingly be called their brood and Felix and Bernadetta. She and the kids are the only ones who haven’t known them as a group for decades but they fit right in, like second nature. Even Ingrid warmed up to Bernadetta’s sweet disposition after the unfortunately memorable door incident. The more time Bernadetta spent with Felix and Sylvain and the other students from Faerghus, the more she understood that physical demonstrations of strength and will were the only language they knew for resolving problems.

“You know, Fe,” Sylvain says, “I know you’ll hate to hear this but he really reminds me of you. When you were a kid.”

Felix lets out a _hmmph_ , watching his wife scribble out a sketch of a pitcher plant on a relatively blank page of the book Isot had brought over with her when she discovered that _what’s Brigid_ was a question with an answer longer than a word. “I suppose you’re right,” he says. “I was rather sensitive.”

Ingrid snorts, gracelessly, and it lands on Sylvain’s ears like music. “That’s putting it lightly,” she says. “Remember when Sylvain had to go back to Gautier two days early from Fhirdiad because they were reporting heavy snow from the north and you cried for the entire two days he was gone?”

Bernadetta laughs, and Isot looks to Felix before laughing too, a little bewildered, a little unsure of if laughter is okay. It’s dangerous to make fun of Felix, and Isot doesn’t know she’s one of the biggest weak spots in his armor, isn’t aware of just how much indignity Felix would let her heap on him.

“Sorry, Fe, you know how she is,” Sylvain says, shrugging, knocking Ingrid’s head against his shoulder.

“I know how you both are,” Felix replies, rolling his eyes back at Sylvain, and for a moment that spins the earth backwards looking at Felix means the same thing as looking at Ingrid, the tightening in his chest against the flood of warmth that sends his vision black around the edges.

//

**cycle four.one**

All Sylvain knows about Almyra is that Claude is from there, that he and Byleth are happily ruling there half the time now, but he thinks of it suddenly as he wakes to a knock at the door. He doesn’t yet know why. He doesn’t bother putting on a robe but dons slippers against the cold of the stone under his feet, making his way to the wood. He waves away one of his staff, sending Tiebaut reluctantly back to his own bedroom near the stairs Sylvain is descending. He sleeps lighter nowadays anyway, now that there’s a chance, however slim, a mercenary with dark hair shot through with silver and eyes like ambergris, and just as hard to look at, might show up at his door at any time. Sure, it had only happened once, years ago, enough time that a sufficient percentage of Sylvain’s house staff had turned over to make the story a rumor, whispers among tittering young things of the mysterious ex-Duke Fraldarius swinging his blade against injustice for whomever might pay.

_Whomever_ had included Sylvain once. It suddenly feels like a long walk to the front door, but Sylvain makes it there when he can shake off the weight of memory.

As soon as he opens it he wishes he hasn’t. Something is terribly, disgustingly wrong, the exhausted-looking messenger on the doorstep, the horse panting loudly enough for him to hear it. The messenger is armed, common but not so common to avoid his notice — one of the few people still fighting under the benevolence of their professor’s rule. His features remind Sylvain of Claude or Cyril, traditionally Almyran like he’d thought of when he awoke, like a bad omen he failed to recognize.

He’s almost a boy, or perhaps Sylvain is almost an old man, and he’s too tired to speak, holding out two hands wrapped around a sheath that Sylvain doesn’t need explained. Taking it from him feels like plunging it between his own ribs, piercing his lungs, and when he closes his eyes everything except the ice cold like a lost limb fades to black.

**cycle four.two**

Sylvain wakes to Felix over him in the middle of the night, unable to determine for a moment if the thudding of his heart is fear or something else entirely.

“You’re here,” he murmurs, reaching up without thinking as if to swipe the dream away, but he jerks his hand back before actually making contact. “You’re alive.”

“You hired the company I’m with,” Felix says. He sounds like memory, more grizzled, hair still ( _still?)_ shot through with silver, shining in the moonlight through Sylvain’s bedroom window. He’s also climbing into Sylvain’s bed, one knee fumbling over his thighs, and it’s not until Felix’s hands tremble against the laces of his shirt that Sylvain fully wakes, fully realizes it’s not a vision. “That butler of yours says you’re not married,” Felix says, not exactly doing his part to dissipate the dreamlike atmosphere. “Why aren’t you fucking married?”

Why not? Sylvain arches his back, letting Felix shuck his shirt over his head, frantic, taking him in with his eyes. “Ingrid won’t have me,” he murmurs, finally grabbing Felix in return. His buckles and ties are unfamiliar but easy enough to feel out, so easy with the warmth of skin underneath to guide him, motivate him. He expects Felix to scoff, but instead in a move ripped directly from a dream Sylvain thinks he’s actually had, he groans, finds his face with his hands, kisses him hard and hungry, deeper than starvation, darker than the night around them.

Getting Felix’s clothes off is a labor but the shock of his skin is virginal, intense enough to send blood shooting to Sylvain’s cock, a predictor for the rest of the night.

After, Sylvain pants among the mess they’ve made, Felix lying next to him, feeling lacerated at the thought of him being as good as gone again in the morning. “So,” he says, when he thinks they’ve been silent long enough, “I take it you’re not married either?”

Felix doesn’t dignify that with a response, but even in the dim moonlight Sylvain can’t miss the quirk of his mouth, smile like a bolt of lightning. For the last time in this life, he looks at Felix and closes his eyes.

**cycle four.three**

When Sylvain wakes, gasping, it’s from a dream, a kaleidoscopic whirlwind that feels real enough to be a memory, but… can’t possibly be. Felix is as good as dead, as good as unreachable, run away with the professor they’d both come to respect and to love during the war.

What a cruel, cruel joke, that Felix would detach from his noble obligations, from the crushing weight of their shared past, without him, leaving him behind to manage his lands and his people on top of the other plates he has to keep spinning. Sylvain presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, as if the spots that burst behind them might return the vision to him.

It isn’t as though he still feels for Felix the way he used to, the kind of feeling that has a vice grip, forcing you to keep looking in the same direction, to keep your thoughts wandering up and down the same lonely trails. It’s eased a little over the years. Womanizing, and whatever the corresponding word is for men, isn’t as satisfying or easy on his aging bones as it was before but it’s still simple enough to find a warm and willing body when he wants one. He’s even had a relationship or two, fulfilling but lost in the endless stream of time and responsibility and the terrible memory of Sylvain’s own father, the fear of what fatherhood might turn him into. And, if nothing else, he’s busy enough undoing everything their parents had done to Sreng. He can’t afford to employ his days the way he had before, thinking of Felix, spending time with Felix, wondering what Felix was doing, wondering whether Felix was wondering what he was doing.

A bit pathetic, maybe, thinking about it now. And in terms of potential partners Felix had certainly traded up. It isn’t hard to see what drew him and Byleth together, their shared love of swords, Felix’s competitiveness that wanted a whetstone to grind against, Byleth’s high tolerance for practical silence.

Still, the dream remains. Palms still flat to his eyes, Sylvain forces himself back to sleep.

//

**cycle five**

Felix wakes to wet eyes. It isn’t uncommon now, ten years since the war, two years since his last kill, six months and some change since his marriage.

Goddess, marriage. It’s like blood in his mouth, pleasant as the body next to him is. They both know why they’re here. And speak of the devil, like clockwork she’s stirring beside him, attuned to his agitation like a metronome to the count of time. Slowly she rises onto one elbow, chin propped on her hand, short hair falling into her eyes.

“Everything all right?” Mercedes asks, always the perfect balance of pressing and retreating. Felix feels just cornered enough to reply.

“A dream,” he says by way of explanation. His chest rises and falls a bit too dramatically for it to believably land. He knows it immediately by the sound in her throat, a hum that means nothing and says nothing. The joys of holy matrimony, not that Seiros and her ilk had been anywhere nearby to witness it.

“About Sylvain?” Mercedes inches closer to him. Like at Garreg Mach, like during the war, she’s drawn to helping, to healing, and Sothis only knows how she managed to turn the sharpest sword in Fodlan away from ongoing conflict. If she’s out there, Felix would like to hear the answer. “The ones about him are the hardest to wake up from.”

“You too?” he asks. He can’t turn to face her. Sometimes the tenderness in her gaze can cut deeper than steel.

“Yes,” she murmurs. “Half a memory, really. I was dreaming of the first time he kissed me.” This is something Felix has known for a long time, that he was not the only person from the Faerghus classroom that was the object of Sylvain’s affection, his attention. In some strange way it may have been what drew him to Mercedes, what keeps him with her now. Among other things, of course. “I don’t suppose you’d care to hear about it.”

Felix doesn’t suppose he’d care to hear about it either, but he did promise for better or for worse. “Tell me,” he says, like it isn’t through clenched teeth.

She’s silent for a moment, like the memory is too sweet for words. “I was leaving the cathedral, through the door near the Goddess Tower. He was leaning against the wall, looking out over the Sealed Forest, up at the sky. You remember how red his hair was,” she says, inviting audience participation. Felix grunts. Of course he remembers. He remembers the color of Sylvain’s hair better than his own name, more clearly than his brother’s face, his father’s voice. “It looked just like the sunset behind it. We started talking. He was always so easy to talk to, still easier to kiss. It was natural,” she says. Her voice has the air of finality. Like she’s done with her story and Felix has to rely on his own painful memory to recall the feeling of Sylvain’s lips, his fingers, his body. Some part of him stirs.

“What was it like?” he asks. He slides his fingers over Mercedes’, trying to silence the roar of just how unfair he’s being to her. Her hand twitches against his.

“Oh, you know,” she replies, and something in her voice says that she’s about to be unfair right back. “You remember how his hands used to be.” She laces her fingers through his, palm against the back of his hand, and guides him up the side of her neck. Felix knows where to settle his fingers, remembers the curl of warmth under his earlobe, the stroke of a thumb against his cheekbone. Her skin is soft, still heated from sleep. It’s not so different. “He held me just like that, looking right into my eyes for a moment.” She sighs, shuffling to face Felix, and the least he can do is mirror her movement. “His eyes used to be so…”

Mercedes trails off, and Felix knows it’s not going any farther between them tonight. Sylvain’s eyes used to be so many things to so many people, lidded, winking, heated, sparked with mischief, crinkling with laughter. The easiest thing to recall is how wide they were, how fearful, rain and blood streaming into them from his hair on the Tailtean Plains. Mercedes had been there, behind Felix to help handle the heavily armored units, watching in horror as Felix cut him down.

Felix had been on his wyvern, as usual, above the mud and the slick of it all, but he had to come in close enough to land the killing blow. In the present, Mercedes presses her palm against his hand, still smoothing the skin on her neck, thumb to her jawline.

“In the dream he ended up turning into a beast, like Miklan,” Mercedes finishes. Like Dedue, like the other Kingdom soldiers deluded by the church into sacrificing their humanity on the battlefield. “For a moment it was like I was in his nightmare, not mine.”

It’s silent for a moment. “This is fucked,” he says, not for the first time.

“Yes, it is,” she agrees.

“Neither of us can ever be as happy as we were when he was alive, when Ingrid and Dimitri and Annette were alive,” he continues, the weight of it threatening as it has a hundred times before to crush him, to consume him.

“That’s possible,” Mercedes replies. This is something that attracts and repels Felix in equal measure, her level-headed acceptance of reality, her often complete lack of desire to change things on any significant scale. Part of him thinks of Glenn, of his friends and the many, many personal failures that had led in some way to their deaths, how he might have saved them through earth-shattering alterations in behavior. Another part thinks of the afternoon he spent with his wife three weeks ago, eating ripe peaches in the orchard behind the church she’s settled into, licking the juice from each others’ fingers like they were teenagers and how he would revise absolutely nothing about that perfect day. Her voice when she speaks again is soft, weighted down once more with sleep. “But we can still _be_.”

Felix lies awake for a long time after that, listening to her light snoring, strangling silently as the blackness of the night presses further and further down his throat.

//

**cycle six**

Like he had a thousand times during the war, Felix snaps to consciousness with the feeling that something is off. Nothing is necessarily wrong — that leaves a different sort of anxiety heavy in his stomach — but off, as though something is about to shatter the tedium of daily living. He turns over onto his back, freeing both his ears to hear a low murmur of voices from somewhere in the Fraldarius keep. It’s not exactly unusual for members of his sparse household to still be awake, doing late night linen laundering or returning from dealing with one of the animals owned by the homesteaders scattered across his land, but something about the sound of movement has Felix slightly on edge. By the time he resigns himself to an interrupted night and cold flagstone against his soles, it’s too late; his door has already started to open.

It’s like watching the sun come slowly over the horizon, the dawning realization of who’s there. The soft voice drifting through the air, easy with familiarity speaking with Oswall, Felix’s closest steward, his Derdriu drawl simple to recognize no matter how late the hour. The ridiculous armored glove, lined with carmine, the one that he says is a good luck charm for how it had brought all his fingers safe and intact through the war. The shock of red bobbing in and out of view as the conversation wraps up, unharmed, unchanged.

And of course as that entire body, as known to Felix as his own, finds its way through the bedroom door to shut behind him, Felix recognizes that face, blinking in surprise to find him sitting up, breaking into a smile as he rises, cold feet be damned.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Sylvain says, sheepishly, which is all he has time to say before Felix has him by the collar, just long enough to pull him down and get his arms around him, his lips on him, missing Sylvain’s grin for a moment in his haste. But Sylvain always guides him home, always has a warm hand for his jaw and a warm mouth for his tongue, always opens up for him and pulls him in for more, one strong arm around his waist, one weak laugh against his breath as they break apart for air.

“You’re supposed to be in Sreng,” Felix says, when he can finally speak around the lump of emotion simmering in his throat. “You’re supposed to be in Sreng for another three days.”

“I know, right?” Sylvain replies. He’s kissing the top of Felix’s head like it’s going out of style, pressing just a touch harder each time, speaking into his hair. “One day earlier than last time.”

It clicks then, for Felix, what’s happening in this moment, and the good news is that the warmth on the outside of his body, provided by Sylvain’s proximity, is matched by an interior heat spreading through him, the stirred embers of a feeling Felix had been afraid to name for most of the time that Sylvain had spurred it inside him. “You know,” he says, murmurs really, turning to lift his face so the point of his chin is flush against Sylvain’s chest, “it doesn’t have to be a competition.”

“Spoken like someone who’s losing,” Sylvain teases, but any sting is soothed by another kiss, this time right on Felix’s forehead, sweet enough to send him reeling. “I wanted to get back to you.”

It’s easy for Sylvain to say that kind of thing, easy for him to be open and loving, thank the goddess for two and a half decades of built trust between them to make cracking that particular nut simple. It’s harder for Felix to respond, harder for Sylvain to hear him, which makes it all the more important to push himself.

“I’m glad to see you,” Felix replies, by way of agreement, and as Sylvain’s smile spreads across the skin where his lips are still pressed he’s once again grateful and guilty for how low the bar is for his affection, how little it takes to make Sylvain shine like the sun. “I was planning to leave for Gautier tomorrow to meet you there.”

“Felix,” Sylvain says, looking down at him with eyes as warm as molten glass, forehead pressed against Felix’s, “don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental on me. Missing me and all that silly stuff.”

It’s hard for him to hear it. Felix wills his eyes not to roll. “I don’t think it’s silly.”

“Of course it’s not.” One more kiss, soft and quick on his mouth, then Sylvain is off toward the bathroom. “Sorry, baby, it’s been a long ride. I’m not going to bed with you until I get the grime off.”

Felix ambles after him, slowly, giving him time to undress, fill the tub, and slip into the water, so by the time he leans against the open doorway the back of Sylvain’s wet head is all he sees over the rim. He crosses his arms, to give him a shield against the conversation he’s about to instigate. “ _Baby,_ huh?”

Sylvain’s sixth sense for Felix maintains its impeccable track record; his body in the betraying water moves smooth and unruffled, fingers working lather through his hair. “You don’t like it?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for Felix to answer before he continues, “Reminds me of when we were kids. In a good way, you know.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” he admits, and it’s immediately worth it as Sylvain whips around to look at him fast enough to send water sloshing over the lip of the tub to the stone floor, mouth open in surprise. Felix might go a bit pink. “Stop looking at me like that. Is it so unexpected that your flattery would work on me? You’ve honed it on dozens before.” It’s a bit barbed, Felix knows, so he grins a little. Placating, balancing. Sylvain latches on, smiles, and turns around, back to scrubbing Gautier grime out of his hair. Felix takes a breath. “How long are you planning on flattering me without doing something about it?”

Sylvain takes his time responding to that, ducking his entire head under the water like a swan, rinsing his hair and himself all at once before turning himself fully around to face Felix. He’s leaning on the edge of the tub like a siren on a rock in one of Ashe’s stories, Felix the sailors ripe for the picking. “I’ll do something about it tonight, if you’ll let me,” he says, low and rumbling, and Felix has to will the blood away from his face as well as other, lower places. He only half-succeeds.

“That’s not what I mean. Not exactly,” he adds, when Sylvain looks ready to pout, and he perks back up again, eerily in tune with Felix’s tone and meaning and all the crossed signals of his personality. The thought alone, just how close they are, just how honed their connection is, actually makes Felix smile — just a bit but it’s enough to light Sylvain’s face like he’s catching fire. “I mean more… long-term.”

If Felix thought Sylvain looked illuminated before, this is like sparking an entire battalion’s worth of blaze in his eyes, as Felix’s words and their intent sink in. “Felix, are you saying what I—”

“You always know exactly what I’m saying,” Felix says, uncrossing his arms, bumping off the doorway with his hip, covering the distance between them in an embarrassing but necessary half-jog, a drop to his knees that he’ll regret later when he has to stand up from unformed bruises. He props his own arms on the edge of the tub, bumping his elbows and nose against Sylvain’s, unconcerned at the vaguely soapy water soaking through his shirt, rolling down over his mouth, and when Sylvain’s eyes drop to follow it proves too tempting to resist, and so it’s against Sylvain’s dripping lips, his hungry tongue, that Felix makes his demand.

//

**cycle seven**

It feels like waking, like coming up from underwater, when she gets one soft, strong arm around Sylvain’s waist. She squeezes, just a little, and it’s somehow tender and encouraging and sympathetic all at once.

“Actually, we’ve decided we’re not going to have her tested,” Mercedes says easily. She’s looking fondly at Ysemay in Sylvain’s arms, kissing her impossibly small nose. Sylvain is looking at her. Ysemay is looking cross-eyed at her mother, the first person she ever loved. They’re a family. He takes that knowledge to steel himself and return his gaze to the Margrave where he's still favoring one leg even as he leans on his cane. “If she has one, we’ll find out. If not — well, it’s not as important these days, is it?”

His father’s expression darkens, disdain and the furious rejection of an inescapable reality: peace is upon them. Edelgard is doing her damndest to fix Faerghus’ dysfunction from Enbarr with many of the old guard gone, prevented from stirring up trouble for her. Sylvain’s work in Sreng, part passion project, part assignment from the Emperor, rankles his father. It’s not enough that Lambert and Rodrigue are dead, pawns in the continental chess game where Sylvain had somehow managed to make the back lines, now their last achievement worth anything in the eyes of the northern nobility is slowly being erased.

If only Felix was still around to see it, Sylvain thinks, and it brings a small smile to his face, which has to make the Margrave even more embittered. Felix never cared much for politics but he also never cared much for his father. _He’ll be back._

“I suppose that is your decision to make,” his father says, tersely. “And surely even if this one does not have a Crest one of your later children may.”

“My,” Mercedes chuckles, and it’s satisfying for Sylvain to see that even though his father is certainly not pleased with her, he is inevitably, begrudgingly, charmed by her. It’s impossible not to be. Sylvain bumps his hip against hers, to punctuate her sentence. “You’re placing an awful lot of responsibility on me.”

The Margrave’s brow furrows, even around the small smile he’d allowed for Sylvain’s wife. “Surely you plan to have more.”

“And on that note,” Sylvain interjects, feeling that he’s left capable Mercedes to fend off the wolf on her own for too long, “we’re tired. You can hassle us more in the morning, father.”

The Margrave _hmmphs,_ but allows them to leave, to retire to Sylvain’s old chambers in the Gautier keep, to settle Ysemay in her cradle alongside them to discourage covert Crest testing now that they’d dropped that bombshell.

“You’re perfect, you know that?” he says, finally, when they’re lying next to each other, Ysemay’s soft breathing the only noise in the room besides their own, the perfect white noise to calm him.

Mercedes laughs, like a tinkling bell, twines her legs with his. “You just have low standards,” she teases. “I know a thing or two about dealing with terrible fathers.”

“Don’t I know it,” he says, bumping their noses together, nudging hers up so their lips press next. It’s good, slow, hot. Mercedes was born to kiss, the goddess formed her mouth perfectly for it, an altar Sylvain is happy to worship at.

She’s good for him, he thinks, rolling her on top of him, hands on the hips that carried their daughter. Mercedes is all softness to sink into, all sturdiness against the world around them, the world that made Sylvain who he is. No darkness despite how she deserves it, no sharp edges despite how honed the war has made them. It’s more than he could ever earn, he thinks, lips at her neck, her body pressing delightfully down on his, down to her smell, down to the feel of her. She is better than perfect. Ysemay sleeps. She, too, is perfect.

Later, though, she wakes, and being close she wakes both of them as well. Mercedes bares her breast to their daughter and Sylvain watches her give from the endless well of generosity in her, wakeful alongside her in an effort to give her something back.

“She reminds me of Emile when he was young,” she says. Her voice is quiet in the dark, likely to keep the baby undisturbed but also to keep a secret between them. Sylvain brushes his fingers against the back of her hand, propping her up against the mattress, other arm secure around Ysemay. “He was so calm as a baby. He almost never cried.”

Sylvain chuckles. “I never had a little brother. I guess Felix was the closest thing, and he couldn’t have been farther from Yse.” He pauses, weighs Felix’s imagined anger at him spilling his secrets against the chance at making Mercedes startle, laugh, any of the many gifts she bestows on him. “Felix used to cry all the time, literally at the drop of a hat.”

She does laugh, and his heart is light. Let Felix hunt him down, he’d have to leave his life of clowning with Leonie to do it. “Oh my,” she says, giggle still fading from her voice, “it’s hard to imagine him like that at all.”

“I know,” Sylvain says, and for everyone else who knew Felix at the Academy it is difficult to picture. It’s not like that for him, it’s easy to see the Felix who tagged along behind Dimitri and Ingrid, who came to Sylvain with his woes for a sympathetic ear and a compassionate arm around his shoulders. He can still picture him now behind his eyelids at night, laughing or crying in alternate intensity. “He was quite cute back then.”

“Sure, sure,” she agrees. Mercedes yawns, hooks her dress back up over her shoulder, lays Ysemay back into her cradle. Sylvain looks at her for a moment, the baby that is not Felix, the little life in their care. When she comes back to their bed, Sylvain rolls Mercedes to the side farthest from the cradle, promises to wake with their daughter if she needs it, puts both of them to sleep with tenderness borne of the trust between them late into the night.

//

**cycle eight**

Felix wakes when his hand fails to support his head any longer, collarbone clacking against his chin with entirely too much force. He’s in the infirmary, of course — not in a bed, because he knows how to fucking fight — but next to one, and full of as much weakness as though it had been him shifting against the white sheets.

“Shit.” Sylvain’s voice is a whisper, as if he could un-wake Felix, shuffling around too quickly by the wince on his face. “Sorry, Felix, I just—”

“Where does it hurt?” Voice raspy with sleep, Felix fumbles on the bedside table for the salve Manuela had left him with, apparently used enough to the glare he’d given her when she asked him to leave for the night to render argument unnecessary. Sylvain’s mouth is tight with pain still but his brow furrows as though Felix grew a second head. He unscrews the lid of the jaw, slightly acrid smell hitting him with a jolt of wakefulness. “Professor Manuela told me you needed this. For… infection or whatever.”

The line on Sylvain’s forehead, splitting his face into semispheres, smoothes over, thankfully erasing the mental dilemma of whether to stretch out his own fingers to press the wrinkle away himself. “Your bedside manner leaves something to be desired, Fe,” he says, but he tugs his leg out from under the blanket anyway. It’s Felix’s turn to wince, at the nickname possibly, but more likely at the ragged looking semi-scar across the inner meat of Sylvain’s thigh. It looks like a close thing.

It requires new bravery, the kind Felix is still far from perfecting, to dip his fingers into the salve, then press those same fingers to that torn flesh, warm with sleep, and he jerks back involuntarily when Sylvain’s leg twitches violently under him.

“Saints, that’s cold,” Sylvain hisses. “Sorry, Felix, but warn a man next time. Or, hey, warm it up a little first.”

“What am I, your bedservant?” Felix huffs, but he settles again on the bed, elbow of the arm holding the jar against the outside of Sylvain’s thigh, re-salved fingers rubbing together for a moment in hopes of dispelling the chill through friction. It works, or Sylvain is better prepared, and Felix rubs Manuela’s magic into his skin. The new bravery is failing him, if the heat spreading along his cheekbones is anything to go by.

“Felix,” Sylvain says, and he wonders how many times and in how many permutations will his name appear in this conversation, “don’t take this the wrong way, I’m happy to see you, but… what are you doing here? I thought last time this happened was about your limit of dealing with my…”

He trails off, but the sentence doesn’t need completing for Felix to understand. He sighs. His fingers splay against Sylvain’s thigh, palm sticky with salve. “I thought after last time you’d understand,” he says. Glancing up at Sylvain through his lashes, he looks puzzled, like what Felix is saying is unbelievable. He can make it a bit more familiar, at least. “I see no amount of healing can cure you being a half-wit. After all this surely you have to know there is no limit when it comes to you.”

“It was a swordmaster,” Sylvain explains after a moment sitting with that, like he can justify himself. “They were too close to Ashe, he couldn’t defend himself. It was him or me, and Sothis knows I can take a hit a bit better.” Felix doesn’t have to look up to see the grin on his face. “Didn’t even end up getting me anywhere important this time.”

It’s like anger rising inside him, but an unusually centered moment tells Felix it’s fear, fear at the image that thought conjures, and another moment gives him the strength to speak that fear into existence. “Every part of you is important,” he says, goddess help him. “Let Ashe handle himself next time.”

There’s silence for a moment. The avoirdupois of Felix’s words falls between them, too heavy for either of them to carry alone, and for a moment he thinks it will drag him down into the ocean, a body weighted with rocks. Then, and he knows it must be Sylvain because no part of him is movable on his own volition, someone takes the jar of salve gently from Felix’s hand to place it back on the bedside table, warm fingers cover his, pressing into Sylvain’s leg, and finally Felix has the courage to look up.

Sylvain’s face is bright as the moon, intense as the sun, very close to Felix. If his scarring is still stiff he doesn’t show it. “Felix,” he says, and his voice is lower still than before, “I’m not trying to go before you. I’m not leaving you behind.”

“Prove it,” Felix says, lifting his chin, defiant or insistent, angling himself intentionally or unintentionally closer to Sylvain. It’s gratifying and overwhelming what happens then, the way Sylvain’s eyes drop to Felix’s mouth, the wounded noise that leaves him, the intention marking his body as he leans forward to, fucking finally, kiss him.

It’s slow at first, like a dream but better, Sylvain’s lips moving against his, Sylvain’s hands cupping his jaw, Sylvain’s pinkies dangling against his throat, Sylvain’s warmth under his fingers crawling up his body over his shirt. Then he grabs Felix by the collar, hauling him up to the head of the bed, and it’s not so slow anymore, more heated skin and bitten lips and pliant tongues against each other. They part only for air, only to pant into each other, to press their foreheads together and think, momentarily, of how irritated Manuela will be. It’s stifled laughter and barely-concealed hunger under the surface, filling the infirmary with its vibration.

But before they can continue, before the inevitable de-escalation when the numbing of the salve wears off and Sylvain’s thigh can no longer serve his favorite purpose, there’s one more thing to say. And so once more Felix gathers his courage, lifts his chin to brush his cheek against Sylvain’s, the scratch of stubble, the gasp of life.

“Sylvain,” he says, and Sylvain is listening so intently that his fingers twist into Felix’s shirt, brushing his ribs, pulling him closer, “don’t you dare go where I can’t follow.”

//

**cycle nine**

It’s on the edge of frightening sometimes, to wake up alongside the incarnation of the goddess, just the adrenaline shot Sylvain needs in these days of peace. Beyond just watching over Fodlan, guiding it as Sothis did, Byleth governs the nations combined under Claude’s demarcations, they manage them. Sylvain helps, he likes to think, they like to tell him. They don’t say much but it’s always the right thing.

“By,” Sylvain says, when the quick shot of fear that feels like awe subsides enough to speak, “do you ever feel like we’ve been here before?”

“In our bed?” Byleth replies, not bothering to engage in the pageantry of stirring awake. Sylvain sometimes wonders when they sleep, like they’d gotten all the rest they needed during the five interminably long years they’d been away. That was a frightening time, Byleth being gone, Sylvain being keenly aware of how gone they were, dealing with that.

“Yeah, in our bed,” he repeats, a little sarcastic. “No, I mean like… doing this. I don’t know. Living this lifetime. Something like that.”

“Are you asking if I believe in past lives? Reincarnation?” They don’t sound incredulous. They never do, but Sylvain wants to keep talking anyway.

“Yes? Maybe?” He sighs. “I’m sure it’s probably against some kind of scripture or teaching or whatever to even wonder. But hey, you know, I figure I’ve got the incarnation of the goddess in bed with me, who better to ask?”

Byleth is silent for a while. They’re often silent, which usually suits Sylvain just fine. He’s a talker, always has been, chatty at councils, garrulous over dinner, loud in bed. Sylvain Gautier can fill a lull in the conversation, has made a career and a life out of it, but for now he can be quiet, patient. “Do you remember in Enbarr, when that ballista almost killed Hilda?”

Sylvain… doesn’t. He racks his brain, lets the guilt flood him that he can’t recall one of his closer friends in the Alliance nearly dying. What he remembers is Byleth fanatically requiring them to dismount any time an archer was in range, knowing how skittish their squad of wyverns and pegasi could be. He remembers that clear as a bell, hopping off one wyvern or another into a copse of defensive forest, hoping to better dodge the projectiles that would pick them off easily if they couldn’t get in close quickly enough. “Don’t be mad,” he says, reflexively like they’re Felix about to shred him with their words. Like they’re Ingrid. “No.”

“Then no,” Byleth says, without hesitation. Sylvain frowns. “I don’t believe in reincarnation.”

“What does my bad memory and Hilda flying too close to a ballista have to do with whether or not we’re born again?” Sylvain asks. “Are you saying if reincarnation was real I’d never have made it to personhood? I’d be, like, a rock or something?”

“Rocks aren’t alive, Sylvain,” they say, and it’s mostly deadpan but it has a hint of fondness that has his mouth watering like a dog’s. Fuck. It’s pathetic, really.

“Okay, a fly or something,” he relents, waving his hand dismissively. “But again what does that have to do with anything?”

There’s a pause this time, but they speak eventually. “For a long time,” they begin, and their voice is serious — the only emotion that they really lean into, even now, “I’ve wondered how choices, my choices, affect the people around me. How deep is the mark they leave.” Sylvain is silent. Byleth doesn’t usually say this much all at one time. It’s a little frightening. “It is shallower than I thought, the wake of the goddess.”

Sylvain retraces his thoughts, grasping backwards, blindly, toward what he’d thought on waking, what had brought him to the question. “You don’t… feel like this has happened before? A different set of us from a different time, ending up in the same place?”

“Like deja vu?” Byleth asks, and their tone is back to normal territory, weightiness gone in the night. And when they put it like that, a one-off feeling of repetition does seem a lot more likely than the memory of an alternate lifetime stirred awake in a dream.

“All right, you’re smarter than me, I get it,” Sylvain says, giving up, rolling over to prop himself up on one arm planted on the other side of their body, hanging over them. “Cut me some slack. Not all of us can fuse with the goddess.”

“That would be quite the challenge for Sothis,” Byleth replies, casually, and Sylvain isn’t a pious man but the way they drop the goddess’ name like it’s an old friend they’re talking about still sends the remnants of a shiver through him.

He’s close to them now, the warmth of their body against his. Maybe it’s the goddess giving them inspiration but he never tires of them. Sylvain leans nearer. “Hey,” he says, changing topics but not really, and Byleth looks up at him, wide eyes like life in the moonlight, “after I’m gone, if you run into me again, another me—”

“Sylvain…” Byleth starts, warning, but he’s nearly done so he finishes.

“—will you tell him I was right?” He drops a kiss on their forehead. It’s selfish, he knows; he doesn’t mind the thought of dying first, knowing he’ll have them, knowing by the time he’s good and ready he’ll be embarrassed enough about getting old by their side to long on some level for death, but Byleth can be sensitive about it. Tonight, though, safe in the bed next to Sylvain they seem willing to take it in stride, or at least they don’t press him on it.

“I will,” they agree, letting him kiss them again. They hum a little, and it’s not especially melodic but it’s music to Sylvain’s ears. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” they ask. “Another chance at life with Felix, and Ingrid, and Dimitri for you.”

If he had been thinking about it, Sylvain is sure he hadn’t let it on, but as usual his spouse sees deeper than he’d like, deeper than he’s comfortable with, so he chuckles against their forehead. “I left Ingrid and his highness behind,” he says, keeping his voice light. At least saying Ingrid’s name doesn’t feel like a stab in the throat anymore, more like Miklan’s hands wrapped around it. Less directly violent, less life-threateningly painful. “And Felix left me. So, you know, they may not want to see me on the next go-around.”

Byleth’s hand trails down his chest, leaving Sylvain with the sinking feeling that the conversation is over, at least for now. “Who wouldn’t want to see you?” they’re murmuring, lifting their chin, and not even the sigh that escapes him can keep Sylvain from trying his hand once again at closing his eyes in prayer.

//

**cycle ten**

Arianrhod is a nightmare made real, and Sylvain wakes in the middle of it to the sound of Ingrid’s voice.

“Sylvain!” she’s calling, and the goddess only knows how long she has been yelling his name over the sounds of skirmishing inside the walls of the fortress city. “Sylvain, I need a heal, quick.”

She’s halfway up the drawbridge, panting, pulling back from the body of whatever Kingdom soldier she’d just dealt with, but Sylvain’s magic can reach that far. He sees the pulse hit her, sees her roll the shoulder of her sword arm, sees her sigh of relief, and then behind her he sees something else.

Felix. Fuck.

“Ingrid.” He thinks he’s yelling but it doesn’t sound loud enough, battle roaring around him like wind in a tunnel, and maybe he’s whispering or saying nothing at all but something in his face makes Ingrid’s grim gratitude slide away, makes her turn back toward the fray, and the line of her spine sags. He’s caught completely up with her before he thinks about it, with her like Byleth had ordered, both of them watching him watch them. The noise around them swells in Sylvain’s ears, drowning out everything else but the sight of Felix, the tremble of Ingrid’s arm when he reaches out to brush it. The muscle tenses under his hand, like she knows what she has to do before Sylvain can even wrap his head around it.

It’s ironic, he thinks, watching them face each other. The professor had suggested Ingrid study swordplay as a stopgap between pegasus mounts, and as usual Ingrid had succeeded through perfect diligence at the Swordmaster certification exam, had taken the class and made it her own through battle after battle. And there, across from them just as he’d planned since childhood, since Glenn and before, is another Swordmaster.

The clash is terrible. Felix is skilled but Ingrid has had training from a being beyond even the capabilities of Faerghus’ best fighters, and she has Sylvain to support her. Whatever healers are in Arianrhod they are not paying attention to the last living Fraldarius.

It’s around a mouthful of blood that Felix speaks, finally. Sylvain thinks he can see one of his teeth on the ground. “All that talk about chivalry and loyalty,” he spits, and he’s crueler than Sylvain remembers, more angry, more betrayed. In this moment he isn’t sure which of them he’s sorrier for. “Only to turn against your homeland.”

Ingrid doesn’t lower her rapier for a moment. Her voice is low but strong. “Maybe I’m not a knight after all.” A slice in her side Sylvain didn’t catch before she changed positions drips dark red. He’ll get her the next time she’s in range. Dorothea is covering them at the choke point into Arianrhod, handling enemies before they’re in reach of her. “Not in the traditional sense, anyway. I’ve betrayed lord and family alike.”

Felix runs at her then, and it’s strange, the fear that seizes Sylvain right around the heart like a cold hand — fear not only for Ingrid, but for Felix, even though all three of them know what’s coming, the inevitable conclusion. Ingrid dodges him easily; Felix is tired, hurt, and he’s hurt more when she catches his sword arm on the tip of her blade, running it cleanly through skin and muscle, down to bone if the glint of white through the tear in Felix’s sleeve is anything to go by. Sylvain casts Physic, yet again, miserably watching Ingrid’s side knit together, watching Felix fall to his knees, watching Felix’s blood drip freely down his hand, over his sword hanging limp in his useless fingers.

Ingrid’s voice shakes when she speaks again. Sylvain catches up to her again, in close for a more convenient heal if need be. “And… I’ve done so because I believe in the professor. I fight for that which I believe in.”

Felix looks like he’s blacking out, his face is sick and pale in the blazing sun overhead, no warmth to be had but no shortage of punishing light. “So—” he starts, but a racking cough interrupts him. Sylvain had heard the words _death rattle_ before but nothing could have prepared him to hear it from Felix. Before he can think about it he’s dropping to his own knees, crawling pathetically toward Felix, his useless arm, his bloody clothes, the gap in his mouth where teeth once were. “So, you won’t step aside.”

“Felix, stop,” Sylvain babbles, not knowing how or why, knowing only how futile his words are, how futile this fight is, and as usual Felix doesn’t fucking listen.

“Then…” He’s gasping, not even looking at Sylvain, barely a threat in the support role he’s always played in life and now plays in war the same way. It hurts, but not as badly as it hurts when his next sentence is punctuated by a merciful and precise thrust from Ingrid.

_Then I’ll have to kill you._

Some part of Sylvain thanks the goddess for Dorothea as he hears Ingrid howl, feels her drop to her knees next to him, watches them both get their shaking limbs around Felix. His arm is dripping with blood, it’s disgusting but not so disgusting that Sylvain doesn’t lift it, press his wrist to his face and smear himself in Felix, searching for a pulse that’s no longer there.

“Fuck,” Ingrid is screaming, “FUCK.” She’s holding Felix up by his coat, pressing her face into his chest. He can feel her weight and Felix’s, waiting desperately for that thread of heartbeat, knowing it will never come.

“Fuck,” she says, one more time, but now it’s more like a choked-off wail, and she reaches one hand out, blindly, grabbing for something other than death, “Sylvain…”

They’re in the middle of a battle but Sylvain stretches one arm out, hauls her to him, supports Felix’s dead weight against his shoulder when she collapses against him, when she holds his waist hard enough to be painful. It’s like the worst version of a memory he has of them when they were children, Ingrid and Felix with him in Gautier when Dimitri couldn’t make it out of Fhirdiad, curled up against the cold they weren’t as used to while Sylvain read them an irresponsible book he’d snuck from the library. He feels like he might snap remembering Felix laughing at the voices Sylvain would do, remembering Ingrid mocking him when he’d get too nasally.

She’s as close as she can be but he hauls her closer, just for a moment, Dorothea yelling at them fading into the rush of air in his ears. By the end of the war, they’ll be the only two left. It’s dangerous but he barely feels the risk as, just for a moment, pressing his forehead against both of his friends, Sylvain closes his eyes.

//

**cycle eleven**

Felix wakes next to Ingrid. It’s not the first time it’s happened — the life of a traveling mercenary is lonely — but it is the first time she’s sitting up, awake, looking down at her own feet like they’re turning into snakes before her eyes.

“What?” he asks, voice slurred with sleep, sitting as quickly as he can manage, reaching for his sword before she’s shaking her head.

“There’s no danger,” she says, which is a new and different indicator that something is wrong. It’s strange language, not their usual _it’s okay_ or _everything’s fine_ when the question arises. “Go back to sleep, if you want.”

“Ingrid.” He tries to make it sound firm, but it’s still cottony in his waking. He shakes himself, mentally and a bit physically. Goddess, he wishes he knew where his shirt had ended up, it’s chilly outside their shared bedroll. “What’s going on?”

She’s quiet for a moment. Outside their tent, their fucking tent, a bird is warbling. It must be near dawn. “When you were younger, did you ever think about what your life would be like?”

Felix reciprocates her silence as he considers. “Not specially,” he says. “I was a second son, I assumed I’d be doing whatever I wanted. By the time Glenn died I was old enough to already know what was ahead of me. Or, I thought I knew,” he adds, allowing one wry wrinkle to turn up his mouth. It’s an indulgence he doesn’t know he can’t afford. “Did you?”

She smiles, and even in the dark he can see it’s strained, off. “Maybe,” she says. “I suppose it was how I coped with my father breathing down my neck, trying to marry me off to the most eligible bachelor at every turn. Anyone who wasn’t you.” The laugh out of her at that is genuine, if brief. “If he could see me now… I always imagined myself as a knight. I suppose I usually pictured Dimitri as the lord I’d be serving, but it didn’t really matter much. The end goal was knighthood, always. Never marriage, never children.”

Something in her silence after is weighty, and perhaps it’s the grogginess still dissipating but for a moment Felix doesn’t think he understands. But then. “Ingrid.”

She’s looking at him, in the darkness turning into pre-dawn, and her eyes are greener than anything he’s ever seen, more piercing than any blade, weightier than armor. “I’m pregnant,” she says, and her tone leaves no room for questions. “It has to be yours.”

_It._ Such a small word for something that has Felix’s breath pinned to his lungs. Suddenly the way Ingrid is sitting makes it obvious, the way her arms hang down to let her hands rest under her belly, the way her legs are crossed to keep her knees out of the way. It’s so like her, too, to be faithful to a man who she doesn’t want, who doesn’t want her right back, their bond too strong to think of breaking even so. He can’t blame her too much for that, it’s been a long time since he’d sought anyone else out either. Younger Felix would have scoffed at him but post-war there’s something to be said for convenience.

“You know what this means,” Ingrid says, and, yes, some part of him does, but she’ll probably spell it out anyway so he stays silent. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“Can’t keep selling your sword?” Felix asks, as if he isn’t sure, as if he needs outside confirmation. “Can’t keep sleeping in tents and risking our lives? Yes, Ingrid, a child isn’t going to mix well into what we’re doing now.”

She frowns, he can almost hear it in the quiet. The bird that was outside has either stopped warbling or looked for less contentious pastures in which to sing. “What we’re doing,” she repeats, and it’s like a question. “Felix…”

“Don’t even think about asking me to abandon you,” he says, and it comes out angry but he and Ingrid have known each other long enough to understand the ins and outs of their voices so he doesn’t bother clarifying, doesn’t bother toning it down. “We’re partners. We’ve known each other our whole lives. I’m not leaving, and you’re not leaving me either.”

Ingrid’s frown softens, coming close to a smile but not quite. “Well, that settles it,” she says, voice just a little lighter. “Thanks, Felix.”

“Don’t thank me,” he snaps. “I’m not doing you any favors.”

Another silence falls between them, between them and the thing growing inside Ingrid, the thing they’ve made. A strange feeling, half sick, half scared, threatens to overwhelm Felix at the thought of it. For the first time in a long time, he remembers how his own mother had died in childbirth and it’s like a fist around his heart and squeezing. He looks at Ingrid, hard, like he’s memorizing her, watching her stare at her own feet. She’s not beautiful, not really, not to his taste, but right now she feels like gravity, like the most important thing in the world. She lifts her gaze, meeting his eyes seriously.

“I think we should visit Sylvain,” she says, knocking a measure of good will from him. He frowns at her. “I’m serious. He and Mercedes have a child already, they might be able to help us.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Felix asks, and Ingrid sighs, draws herself up all the way through her spine.

“He wrote me a letter,” she says, and it’s like a javelin of light has fallen into their tent. Felix forgets how to breathe for a moment. “I told him how he could find me before we left, Felix. I couldn’t just leave him behind.”

“We left everyone else behind,” he snaps, trying hard to wrestle down a feeling of betrayal he suspects is unjust.

“Sylvain is not _everyone else_ , and you know it,” she says, firmly.Her resolve melts quickly, though, and she slumps back down, resting her cheek against her knee. “I have no idea how to do this. I need help.”

The anxiety in Ingrid’s voice feels like an arrow through a crack in his emotional armor, and he shuffles closer to her, placing his hand on her back in an attempt at supportive steadiness. She sighs, he can feel it in his fingers. “We need help,” he admits, and her eyes flash up to his again, naked hope like a knife in her gaze. “I suppose we can trust Mercedes to offer good advice.”

“Thank you,” she says, earnest and dependable Ingrid, such a dedicated friend that when Felix had tried to leave in the middle of the night after Nemesis she’d beaten him to the stables, somehow knowing he was going though he’d said nothing to anyone. He changes the pressure on her back, guiding her to lie back down, laying next to her and trying not to be too precious about it. “What in the world are we going to do instead of this?”

Sounds like a problem for a future Felix and Ingrid, but he hums thoughtfully, humoring her. “Maybe we can be farmers,” he says, dryly, and the sound of her laughter puts him at ease enough to drift back to sleep.

//

**cycle twelve**

Felix wakes up on the day after Lysithea dies on a bench in her parents’ house. This is where he’d found her, in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, a stroke of pure luck if you believed in that sort of thing. Felix doesn’t. If he believed in anything it had been Lysithea.

With the wood under his head, he thinks of Linhardt for the first time in a long time. The useless waste of space. Felix knows his sole self-driven purpose is ill-defined _Crest research_ and still he had let her leave the Empire, let her slip away.

He presses his hands to his eyes. Fuck. It’s not Linhardt’s fault, if there’s anyone to blame it’s the brutal mages who tortured Lysithea and Edelgard, who put them on their bloody path. Byleth and Jeritza had vanished immediately after Fhirdiad, going underground at the will of the emperor and her sinister lapdog, bringing the Agarthans’ evil work to a brutal end. And after all that they found nothing, nothing to help Lysithea. Edelgard still had a shot, Felix supposes, thank the fucking goddess for that. She’s stronger than Lysithea, Linhardt might get his act together in time to save her shortened life. He hopes he does. Imagining Bernadetta alone hurts to think about.

All the hurt in the world though is less than the vacant emptiness at the root of it all. Lysithea is gone. Felix had left the Empire, left his friends and his life behind, unable to square with everything he had done and the restless energy it left behind. He’d resigned himself to vagrancy, to years without roots and a violent death somewhere no one knew his name. Then he’d found her again, found something to put whatever faith he had left in.

Four years. Only four years of trying to make her happy, trying to keep her life peaceful. Her parents are lying in the other room under the weight of outliving their child.

Is this more or less pain than Tailean?

The bench presses against his spine as the weight of that settles on him, squeezing the air from his lungs. Felix had hoped the others would follow him to the new professor, Annette, Ingrid. Ingrid had died with his father, Annette with hers. And now, every day, Felix wakes up with the shame of knowing his pride had stood in the way of Sylvain. He would have joined, Felix knows he would have, he just needed someone to ask him, someone to care about him. Sylvain always needed to know he was wanted. Felix could have been the one. He should have been. Fuck.

Lysithea had known what it was like, abandoning your house, betraying your friends. She’d struck down Leonie at Myrddin, watched as Petra did the same to Ignatz. At Derdriu they had worked as a team to take down Hilda, to push Claude hard enough that he left Fodlan altogether.

In the end, he hadn’t even seen Sylvain fall. He’d been on the west side of the field, taking out mages from the Kingdom, their own mages more than equipped to handle the heavily armored units. Mercedes had been the one to strike the last blow. That had been one hell of a night, worse even than Fhirdiad, worse even than Arianrhod. Felix’s father had done any number of things to justify his son turning on him, even without considering his participation in the brutal and unjust annexation of Sreng territory within Felix’s lifetime. Sylvain had done nothing but to be loyal to his friends, to want to hear from Felix that he missed him and wanted him to stay by his side. Felix was, and is, a fucking coward, lying alone in his dead partner’s parents’ house, taking up space without anything to offer in return.

Lysithea is gone now. She’s dead. Mercedes, Felix supposes, might be equipped for this conversation if only she wasn’t functionally inaccessible in Fhirdiad, at that school with the girl from the underground. Felix is never going back there, never returning to the Kingdom he had abandoned, that no longer exists. Annette had died there, struck down defending the city she loved, where she’d lived in wasted but endless hope of her father’s return. In the end, Felix supposes she got her wish, Gilbert fallen too in the burning capitol.

_Is this time around the worst one of all?_ The thought occurs to him unbidden, incomprehensible, swirling through his mind like smoke. It takes a moment before it starts to make any kind of sense. He’s thought about it before, in the abstract, maybe one layer removed from the exact question — what might have happened if he’d made different choices, if they all had. If their professor hadn’t sided with Edelgard and then with the Empire. If Felix had stayed in Hanneman’s class, if he hadn’t been so stubbornly opposed to improving anything other than his swordplay. If he’d told Sylvain how he felt. If Linhardt had delivered on all his fucking promises.

Could it be that somewhere out there a version of Felix is living the life he should be? Happy with his friends? War across the continent nothing more than a memory? Ingrid and Dimitri and Annette alive? Lysithea and Sylvain…

It’s a waste of time to even consider. He’s here and now and he has what he has and that’s it. If the goddess ever gives him another chance he’ll have to take it, but for now he has nothing and no one… no one but the people in the other room, the parents Lysithea had spent her life trying to set at ease. Felix can hear stirring, sniffling if he strains his ears. He doesn’t know where to go next. He imagines Mercedes will hear at some point and come find him, all sisterly concern and sympathetic words.

For now, though, without Lysithea… the Ordelias will need help, support. The people of the region are used to her presence, her baking, her magic, and Felix has learned a thing or two in the last four years. Just for a moment, before rising to meet the Ordelias in their grief, Felix closes his eyes.

//

**cycle thirteen**

Every morning waking up alongside Felix is like the first time, or rather like the first real time, and Sylvain usually likes to savor it. However, when his eyes flash open they do land on Felix’s face, but it’s neither morning nor the time to take it slow. It’s dark enough that he wonders why he’s even awake at all, but as his other senses stir it’s simple enough to determine the cause, the vice grip on his wrist, fingerprints to his pulse.

“Everything okay?” he asks, meeting Felix’s eyes, intense in the moon-dark of their bedroom. _Their bedroom_. It’s the world’s sweetest gut punch, a comforting backdrop even as Sylvain sits up to better get a reassuring arm around Felix’s shoulders, and whatever is happening must be irrational, powerful, because Felix goes willingly to him, bumps his forehead against Sylvain’s collarbone without resistance or fuss or playful reluctance.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Felix murmurs, and even the strangeness of the situation can’t de-fang the heat thrumming under Sylvain’s skin as his lips brush against him with every word. Silently he wills his blood to calm, like he’s a blushing schoolboy, but it sings quietly nonetheless. “I was… I was having a dream.”

“Not a good one, I’m guessing,” Sylvain says, keeping his voice light but serious, the kind Felix likes to hear. Sylvain’s cheek is pressed to the top of his head before he realizes he’s moving.

“Some parts were good,” Felix says, hesitantly, like he’s still figuring out what he saw, what he’s going to say. “It was like ten dreams all stacked on top of one another. Some good, some bad.” The fingers still at Sylvain’s wrist tighten for a second. “Sorry to wake you. I wanted to…”

This part, more than any other, is still overwhelming, still fresh as a blade, the trust forged over a lifetime enough to open Felix up, to let him tell Sylvain in his own way how much he cares. For a moment he can’t speak, so he tightens the arm around Felix, just a little. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, when he can. “I’m right here.”

“I know you are,” Felix huffs, like he’s personally offended by his own irrationality. “You were there sometimes in the dream, too. Sometimes like this, sometimes not. Other times you weren’t. One time you were there and I wasn’t.”

Sylvain hums, and for some reason he thinks about Hilda from the Alliance, a ballista — maybe a buried memory from Gronder Field. “Past lives?” he asks. “Possible outcomes?”

“Nonsense,” Felix says, but his voice is a little unsure, like he’s trying to convince himself. A moment of silence, then, “This is the only possible outcome I’m interested in.”

It’s like someone’s hung the sun in Sylvain’s chest, reinforced by the warm flush of embarrassment he can feel across Felix’s face where it’s still pressed against him. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asks, and it’s impossible to keep the grin out of his voice, hidden in Felix’s hair.

“I refuse to inflate your ego,” he snaps, making to squirm away, but Sylvain just pulls him closer, gets his other arm around him, and all that his wriggling does once he has Felix’s waist under his hands is settle him into his lap, half in and half out of the sheets. “Brute.”

“You like it,” Sylvain murmurs, brushing his nose against Felix’s, thumb stroking along his ribs. “You’re stronger than I am, we both know it.”

“Don’t forget it,” Felix replies, firmly, undermining himself a bit with the hand snaking into Sylvain’s hair. “I mean it, you know,” he adds, fingers moving against his scalp. “This is what I want. You are what I want.”

“Fe,” Sylvain says, trying not to make it sound as whiny as he feels, fighting the inner self-loathing urge to protest. “I know, it’s the same for me. Being with you is more, better, than anything I even knew how to want.”

“We belong here,” Felix says then, and if his voice was firm before it’s sure as steel now. “We belong together, Sylvain.”

“Sounds like my line,” he offers, weakly, but he can’t find it in him to blame himself when it feels like the air is being pressed from his lungs, like there’s nothing left inside him but warmth and blooming flowers and the tender light of the emotion that’s led them here. “You know I feel the same, Felix.”

“If there is such a thing as reincarnation,” Felix says, “this is the last one. I don’t want another chance. I want us to stay together until we die together, and then we’ll be gone.”

“Gone together,” Sylvain agrees, unable to hold back any longer from pressing a kiss to the corner of Felix’s sure mouth.

“In the dream,” Felix says, canting his hips against Sylvain’s almost unconsciously, a learned reaction to their lips brushing, stirring interest between them, “when I wasn’t with you I was looking for you. If I knew it or not, I was. I was less happy when I was without you.”

“Then don’t be,” Sylvain says, simply. “Don’t be without me. Don’t be less happy.”

“I won’t be, you half-wit.” Even in tenderness Felix is sharp, a blade wrapped in fabric. “That’s what I’m telling you. If a version of me exists without you, they’re lost.”

“That’s not happening.” Sylvain feels like a spiral might be imminent, the kind that hasn’t plagued either of them much in the settling after the war, in the miraculous peace developing under Dimitri, so he nudges Felix’s face up with his nose, kisses him firm and fully; no pressure, no rush, just the simple comfort of physicality that words can never bring Felix. It’s the right move. Felix reciprocates immediately, mouth softer than his speech, fingers curling in his hair, sighing into Sylvain to mingle their breath.

Things aren’t slowing down, not now that Sylvain can feel Felix getting hard against his thigh, where their legs are pressed together sweet and warm, but their conversation is a door left open. Before he can get too carried away, Sylvain breaks whatever number kiss they’re wrapped up in, heart lurching at the muffled curse he gets for his trouble, his hand drifting low as an unspoken promise to Felix that they’ll continue and in short order.

“Felix,” he says, hot and weighty, fingers splayed against the skin of his stomach, tucking under his waistband, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m with you.”

“You’d better be,” Felix says, voice flatteringly breathy, and Sylvain can’t help but smile, can’t help but kiss him again, can’t help but close his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> i learned some things while working on this: 1. i have never played through the game without either felix or sylvain in my house. felix and dorothea are my most recruited characters, i’ve only played one time each without either of them. 2. i have played this game WAY too many times. i think i still have notes on all my playthroughs so if you want advice let me know, haha. thanks for reading!


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